George W. Bush vs. Donald Trump
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  George W. Bush vs. Donald Trump
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Question: Who is better?
#1
George W. Bush
 
#2
Donald Trump
 
#3
Neither
 
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Total Voters: 107

Author Topic: George W. Bush vs. Donald Trump  (Read 5478 times)
KaiserDave
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« Reply #50 on: January 07, 2021, 01:57:20 PM »

I guess the psychopath/murderer/war criminal who killed fewer people is 'better' than the psychopath/murderer/war criminal who killed far more people, but both are scum? Not that difficult?
350,000 is a lot of people.

This comment shows a tremendous amount of ignorance/callousness toward the lives of innocent non-Americans (both international COVID victims whose deaths couldn't really be attributed to Trump and civilians killed by America's wars).
You know that the US has considerably more deaths than its peers in the developed world and you know that Trump has bungled this and resulted in many preventable deaths. I'm sure you're aware of that. Honestly the amount of mental gymnastics that is being done to declare Bush a worse president than Trump is absurd. We have been brought closer to the brink of the collapse of the republic since the civil war by him. He has blood on his hands and the rest of his body. He destroys international relations and makes America a joke. You are seeing an unprecedented failure of a president who is actively trying to subvert democracy and the founding principals of the United States like no other president ever has. The Iraq war was bad. But what did Bush that resembles all of this?

Uhhhh. I see a lot of things you listed that he did. Bolded those.
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SWE
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« Reply #51 on: January 07, 2021, 02:00:35 PM »

Moderates and leftists who say Bush is worse, do you still stand by that?
Yesterday certainly tightened the gap, if that becomes a normal day for the next 15+ years then Trump will finally start to catch up to Bush
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« Reply #52 on: January 07, 2021, 02:53:35 PM »

I guess the psychopath/murderer/war criminal who killed fewer people is 'better' than the psychopath/murderer/war criminal who killed far more people, but both are scum? Not that difficult?
350,000 is a lot of people.
Most of them would be dead if Clinton was president too...
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Battista Minola 1616
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« Reply #53 on: January 07, 2021, 03:27:09 PM »

I guess the psychopath/murderer/war criminal who killed fewer people is 'better' than the psychopath/murderer/war criminal who killed far more people, but both are scum? Not that difficult?
350,000 is a lot of people.

Ok. I guess Conte killed 78,000 people and Wilmès and De Croo killed 20,000 people then? Ah and coincidentally Italy and Belgium both have more deaths per capita than the US.
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Lincoln Republican
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« Reply #54 on: January 08, 2021, 06:59:57 PM »

George, obviously

No contest
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Santander
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« Reply #55 on: January 08, 2021, 07:06:18 PM »
« Edited: January 08, 2021, 07:13:17 PM by #StandWithSanchez »

If you go solely by body count, Abraham Lincoln was the worst President of all-time. (He is, but for other reasons) It's an absurd metric.
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Battista Minola 1616
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« Reply #56 on: January 08, 2021, 07:53:32 PM »

If you go solely by body count, Abraham Lincoln was the worst President of all-time. (He is, but for other reasons) It's an absurd metric.

I like how you had to edit the post just to add the part I bolded, lol. Never change, Santander.
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MoreThanPolitics
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« Reply #57 on: January 09, 2021, 01:41:04 AM »

Trump, but with Dubya's rhetoric.
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Lechasseur
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« Reply #58 on: January 09, 2021, 07:14:40 AM »

George W. Bush and it isn't close
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Lechasseur
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« Reply #59 on: January 09, 2021, 07:57:51 AM »

George W. Bush, easily. This was never a question for me - it was always going to be GWB for me. I miss you, Dubya.

Same
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« Reply #60 on: January 09, 2021, 07:56:07 PM »

Trump is still better in my opinion. Trump at least didn't escalate with Iran or start new wars....And that my friends is where my praise of Trump ends.
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Santander
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« Reply #61 on: January 09, 2021, 08:15:14 PM »

Trump is still better in my opinion. Trump at least didn't escalate with Iran or start new wars....And that my friends is where my praise of Trump ends.
Huh

The first thing he did was tear up the Iran Deal, which had issues, but tearing it up after the fact was much worse.
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« Reply #62 on: January 09, 2021, 08:15:55 PM »

Trump is still better in my opinion. Trump at least didn't escalate with Iran or start new wars....And that my friends is where my praise of Trump ends.
Huh

The first thing he did was tear up the Iran Deal, which had issues, but tearing it up after the fact was much worse.

I guess I should say not escalate into all out war.
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Santander
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« Reply #63 on: January 09, 2021, 08:21:05 PM »

Trump is still better in my opinion. Trump at least didn't escalate with Iran or start new wars....And that my friends is where my praise of Trump ends.
Huh

The first thing he did was tear up the Iran Deal, which had issues, but tearing it up after the fact was much worse.

I guess I should say not escalate into all out war.

I didn't realize Bush had a war with Iran.
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Fubart Solman
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« Reply #64 on: January 10, 2021, 03:51:02 AM »

From an American PoV, Bush is obviously better. Bush v Gore, while bad holds no candle to everything that Trump has personally done to undermine American Democracy. His callous lack of action greatly amplified the COVID death toll here. Hurricanes Maria and Katrina had similar levels of mishandling. Both Bush and Trump’s terms ended with economic malaise. Sure, the Dow Jones is now at like 31,000, but that doesn’t matter to the millions of people that have had their livelihoods ruined over the last year and are lining up by the miles at food banks.

That’s not to excuse Bush’s war crimes, but most people ignore that because that’s overseas and doesn’t really affect them. And that’s the honest truth. The hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians don’t matter to most Americans. It’s sad, but they just don’t matter to most Americans.

To top it off, Trump is simply put, an @$$hole. Bush was an agreeable idiot like Tony Abbott, but he at least (seemed?) like he usually cared for America. Trump doesn’t give a rat’s butt about America.

Taking the “neither” option here is like voting for Jorgensen in 2020.

Trump is still better in my opinion. Trump at least didn't escalate with Iran or start new wars....And that my friends is where my praise of Trump ends.
Huh

The first thing he did was tear up the Iran Deal, which had issues, but tearing it up after the fact was much worse.

And then Trump juked us into thinking that the 2020 crisis of the year was going to be war with Iran when he had that general assassinated a year ago almost to the day.
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VAR
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« Reply #65 on: January 10, 2021, 08:23:53 AM »

Yikes at this matchup, neither.
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Matt from VT
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« Reply #66 on: January 10, 2021, 05:16:47 PM »

I think the only argument for Bush here is “lol nice guy Smiley “ Trump’s rhetoric was certainly more toxic, and he was obviously still horrible, but on almost any metric he was certainly better than Dubya. For example, if I were to tell you there were two candidates on the ballot:

Candidate 1 is:

Pro-life
Extremely Anti-Gay
Extremely Anti-Marijuana legalization
Arguably a top 5 military hawk among all U.S. Presidents
Against the vast majority of government spending that wasn’t directly tied to murdering Middle-Easterners
A Bible-Thumper who uses the Good Book to justify murdering the brown people in Iraq, along with his attempts at constitutionally banning gay-rights.

Candidate 2 is:

Pro-life (but everyone knows he doesn’t actually give two sh*ts about this issue)
Has made almost no attempt to overturn national gay marriage, besides occasional whispers that never went anywhere.
Fired his Attorney General who wanted to prosecute states that had legalized marijuana. And sure, while there were other reasons that he fired Sessions, from everything we can tell he wanted him to leave states that had legalized alone. 
Got us less involved overall in the Middle East
Is fine spending federal dollars to stimulate the economy.
Is so obviously not a Bible Thumper that he can’t even hold the book right side up.

The only area where Bush was demonstrably better than Trump was the immigration issue, and while I agree, his stances on immigration were abysmal, I don’t think that his stance on this was any worse than the Tea Party Era Republican Party of 2009-12. Trump saw where the party was headed, and jumped on it. This obviously doesn’t excuse his behavior, or horrific views on most issues, but let’s be realistic, Bush would’ve never gotten the opportunity to be president if he had run in 2016 with his “compassionate” views on immigration. He would’ve lost the primary to Trump or whoever the “populist,” anti-immigrant candidate was.

If I’m a Democrat however, I would much rather run against a Bush type in 2024, than a Trump type. I’d welcome the neo-cons reclaiming the GOP as it would likely lead to 3 or 4 straight Democratic victories. The key to victory right now is blue-collar Americans. If the GOP goes back to the neo-cons, it can almost be guaranteed that many of the gains they made among working class whites will be erased in the years to come.
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« Reply #67 on: January 10, 2021, 06:41:46 PM »

I think the only argument for Bush here is “lol nice guy Smiley “ Trump’s rhetoric was certainly more toxic, and he was obviously still horrible, but on almost any metric he was certainly better than Dubya. For example, if I were to tell you there were two candidates on the ballot:

Candidate 1 is:

Pro-life
Extremely Anti-Gay
Extremely Anti-Marijuana legalization
Arguably a top 5 military hawk among all U.S. Presidents
Against the vast majority of government spending that wasn’t directly tied to murdering Middle-Easterners
A Bible-Thumper who uses the Good Book to justify murdering the brown people in Iraq, along with his attempts at constitutionally banning gay-rights.

Candidate 2 is:

Pro-life (but everyone knows he doesn’t actually give two sh*ts about this issue)
Has made almost no attempt to overturn national gay marriage, besides occasional whispers that never went anywhere.
Fired his Attorney General who wanted to prosecute states that had legalized marijuana. And sure, while there were other reasons that he fired Sessions, from everything we can tell he wanted him to leave states that had legalized alone. 
Got us less involved overall in the Middle East
Is fine spending federal dollars to stimulate the economy.
Is so obviously not a Bible Thumper that he can’t even hold the book right side up.

The only area where Bush was demonstrably better than Trump was the immigration issue, and while I agree, his stances on immigration were abysmal, I don’t think that his stance on this was any worse than the Tea Party Era Republican Party of 2009-12. Trump saw where the party was headed, and jumped on it. This obviously doesn’t excuse his behavior, or horrific views on most issues, but let’s be realistic, Bush would’ve never gotten the opportunity to be president if he had run in 2016 with his “compassionate” views on immigration. He would’ve lost the primary to Trump or whoever the “populist,” anti-immigrant candidate was.

If I’m a Democrat however, I would much rather run against a Bush type in 2024, than a Trump type. I’d welcome the neo-cons reclaiming the GOP as it would likely lead to 3 or 4 straight Democratic victories. The key to victory right now is blue-collar Americans. If the GOP goes back to the neo-cons, it can almost be guaranteed that many of the gains they made among working class whites will be erased in the years to come.

Bush created a fertile ground for Trump to rise in. Trump's rhetoric created division, polarization and violence, but on policies he was much better. Both were atrocious though and easily among the worst presidents we've ever had.
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dw93
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« Reply #68 on: January 10, 2021, 06:44:40 PM »

I think the only argument for Bush here is “lol nice guy Smiley “ Trump’s rhetoric was certainly more toxic, and he was obviously still horrible, but on almost any metric he was certainly better than Dubya. For example, if I were to tell you there were two candidates on the ballot:

Candidate 1 is:

Pro-life
Extremely Anti-Gay
Extremely Anti-Marijuana legalization
Arguably a top 5 military hawk among all U.S. Presidents
Against the vast majority of government spending that wasn’t directly tied to murdering Middle-Easterners
A Bible-Thumper who uses the Good Book to justify murdering the brown people in Iraq, along with his attempts at constitutionally banning gay-rights.

Candidate 2 is:

Pro-life (but everyone knows he doesn’t actually give two sh*ts about this issue)
Has made almost no attempt to overturn national gay marriage, besides occasional whispers that never went anywhere.
Fired his Attorney General who wanted to prosecute states that had legalized marijuana. And sure, while there were other reasons that he fired Sessions, from everything we can tell he wanted him to leave states that had legalized alone. 
Got us less involved overall in the Middle East
Is fine spending federal dollars to stimulate the economy.
Is so obviously not a Bible Thumper that he can’t even hold the book right side up.

The only area where Bush was demonstrably better than Trump was the immigration issue, and while I agree, his stances on immigration were abysmal, I don’t think that his stance on this was any worse than the Tea Party Era Republican Party of 2009-12. Trump saw where the party was headed, and jumped on it. This obviously doesn’t excuse his behavior, or horrific views on most issues, but let’s be realistic, Bush would’ve never gotten the opportunity to be president if he had run in 2016 with his “compassionate” views on immigration. He would’ve lost the primary to Trump or whoever the “populist,” anti-immigrant candidate was.

If I’m a Democrat however, I would much rather run against a Bush type in 2024, than a Trump type. I’d welcome the neo-cons reclaiming the GOP as it would likely lead to 3 or 4 straight Democratic victories. The key to victory right now is blue-collar Americans. If the GOP goes back to the neo-cons, it can almost be guaranteed that many of the gains they made among working class whites will be erased in the years to come.

Bush created a fertile ground for Trump to rise in. Trump's rhetoric created division, polarization and violence, but on policies he was much better. Both were atrocious though and easily among the worst presidents we've ever had.

Let's not forget the roles Nixon, Reagan, and Gingrich had in Trump's rise.
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« Reply #69 on: January 10, 2021, 08:57:54 PM »

I think the only argument for Bush here is “lol nice guy Smiley “ Trump’s rhetoric was certainly more toxic, and he was obviously still horrible, but on almost any metric he was certainly better than Dubya. For example, if I were to tell you there were two candidates on the ballot:

Candidate 1 is:

Pro-life
Extremely Anti-Gay
Extremely Anti-Marijuana legalization
Arguably a top 5 military hawk among all U.S. Presidents
Against the vast majority of government spending that wasn’t directly tied to murdering Middle-Easterners
A Bible-Thumper who uses the Good Book to justify murdering the brown people in Iraq, along with his attempts at constitutionally banning gay-rights.

Candidate 2 is:

Pro-life (but everyone knows he doesn’t actually give two sh*ts about this issue)
Has made almost no attempt to overturn national gay marriage, besides occasional whispers that never went anywhere.
Fired his Attorney General who wanted to prosecute states that had legalized marijuana. And sure, while there were other reasons that he fired Sessions, from everything we can tell he wanted him to leave states that had legalized alone. 
Got us less involved overall in the Middle East
Is fine spending federal dollars to stimulate the economy.
Is so obviously not a Bible Thumper that he can’t even hold the book right side up.

The only area where Bush was demonstrably better than Trump was the immigration issue, and while I agree, his stances on immigration were abysmal, I don’t think that his stance on this was any worse than the Tea Party Era Republican Party of 2009-12. Trump saw where the party was headed, and jumped on it. This obviously doesn’t excuse his behavior, or horrific views on most issues, but let’s be realistic, Bush would’ve never gotten the opportunity to be president if he had run in 2016 with his “compassionate” views on immigration. He would’ve lost the primary to Trump or whoever the “populist,” anti-immigrant candidate was.

If I’m a Democrat however, I would much rather run against a Bush type in 2024, than a Trump type. I’d welcome the neo-cons reclaiming the GOP as it would likely lead to 3 or 4 straight Democratic victories. The key to victory right now is blue-collar Americans. If the GOP goes back to the neo-cons, it can almost be guaranteed that many of the gains they made among working class whites will be erased in the years to come.

Bush created a fertile ground for Trump to rise in. Trump's rhetoric created division, polarization and violence, but on policies he was much better. Both were atrocious though and easily among the worst presidents we've ever had.

Let's not forget the roles Nixon, Reagan, and Gingrich had in Trump's rise.
certainly!
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« Reply #70 on: January 10, 2021, 09:22:27 PM »

Voted 'neither'. (Thanks for the option!)

Don't forget that, in addition to 100,000+ deaths of Iraqi and US citizens, Bush expanded the surveillance state so that you can't even borrow a library book without that ending up in some government records.

I'm still a believer that Trump is incompetent and Bush (or rather Cheney, who was running the whole show) is genuinely evil. Neither of them care about the Constitution. And the rehabilitation of Bush among Democrats (RL Dems, not people here) is an indicator of short memories at best.
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AGA
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« Reply #71 on: January 10, 2021, 11:11:20 PM »

Bush saved millions of lives from AIDS.
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Matt from VT
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« Reply #72 on: January 11, 2021, 01:42:15 PM »

Voted 'neither'. (Thanks for the option!)

Don't forget that, in addition to 100,000+ deaths of Iraqi and US citizens, Bush expanded the surveillance state so that you can't even borrow a library book without that ending up in some government records.

I'm still a believer that Trump is incompetent and Bush (or rather Cheney, who was running the whole show) is genuinely evil. Neither of them care about the Constitution. And the rehabilitation of Bush among Democrats (RL Dems, not people here) is an indicator of short memories at best.

The thing is, most RL Dems that I know (especially older working class types) still mostly think that Bush sucks as much as they did back in 2008. I’m convinced it’s upper middle class and rich people who are most likely to experience a Bush revisionism. Especially Hollywood, I’m convinced that those idiots hurt Democrats more than they help us in most elections.

I think the only argument for Bush here is “lol nice guy Smiley “ Trump’s rhetoric was certainly more toxic, and he was obviously still horrible, but on almost any metric he was certainly better than Dubya. For example, if I were to tell you there were two candidates on the ballot:

Candidate 1 is:

Pro-life
Extremely Anti-Gay
Extremely Anti-Marijuana legalization
Arguably a top 5 military hawk among all U.S. Presidents
Against the vast majority of government spending that wasn’t directly tied to murdering Middle-Easterners
A Bible-Thumper who uses the Good Book to justify murdering the brown people in Iraq, along with his attempts at constitutionally banning gay-rights.

Candidate 2 is:

Pro-life (but everyone knows he doesn’t actually give two sh*ts about this issue)
Has made almost no attempt to overturn national gay marriage, besides occasional whispers that never went anywhere.
Fired his Attorney General who wanted to prosecute states that had legalized marijuana. And sure, while there were other reasons that he fired Sessions, from everything we can tell he wanted him to leave states that had legalized alone. 
Got us less involved overall in the Middle East
Is fine spending federal dollars to stimulate the economy.
Is so obviously not a Bible Thumper that he can’t even hold the book right side up.

The only area where Bush was demonstrably better than Trump was the immigration issue, and while I agree, his stances on immigration were abysmal, I don’t think that his stance on this was any worse than the Tea Party Era Republican Party of 2009-12. Trump saw where the party was headed, and jumped on it. This obviously doesn’t excuse his behavior, or horrific views on most issues, but let’s be realistic, Bush would’ve never gotten the opportunity to be president if he had run in 2016 with his “compassionate” views on immigration. He would’ve lost the primary to Trump or whoever the “populist,” anti-immigrant candidate was.

If I’m a Democrat however, I would much rather run against a Bush type in 2024, than a Trump type. I’d welcome the neo-cons reclaiming the GOP as it would likely lead to 3 or 4 straight Democratic victories. The key to victory right now is blue-collar Americans. If the GOP goes back to the neo-cons, it can almost be guaranteed that many of the gains they made among working class whites will be erased in the years to come.

Bush created a fertile ground for Trump to rise in. Trump's rhetoric created division, polarization and violence, but on policies he was much better. Both were atrocious though and easily among the worst presidents we've ever had.

Let's not forget the roles Nixon, Reagan, and Gingrich had in Trump's rise.
certainly!

Yes, I’d argue that Trump was like if Teddy Roosevelt and Nixon had a really f***ed up baby, with a dash of Reagan clichés thrown in. But we also can’t completely let Democrats off the hook 100% in the rise of Trump. If the Democrats had actually been able to accomplish some of the same economic policy goals that they’ve been talking about since the 60’s, the environment most likely wouldn’t have been fertile for someone like Trump to rise. For example if we’d gotten universal health care, and a better welfare state, the GOP would be so obsessed with slashing those programs that we’d never have lost in places like Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin etc. 
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Fubart Solman
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« Reply #73 on: January 11, 2021, 06:55:01 PM »

Voted 'neither'. (Thanks for the option!)

Don't forget that, in addition to 100,000+ deaths of Iraqi and US citizens, Bush expanded the surveillance state so that you can't even borrow a library book without that ending up in some government records.

I'm still a believer that Trump is incompetent and Bush (or rather Cheney, who was running the whole show) is genuinely evil. Neither of them care about the Constitution. And the rehabilitation of Bush among Democrats (RL Dems, not people here) is an indicator of short memories at best.

The thing is, most RL Dems that I know (especially older working class types) still mostly think that Bush sucks as much as they did back in 2008. I’m convinced it’s upper middle class and rich people who are most likely to experience a Bush revisionism. Especially Hollywood, I’m convinced that those idiots hurt Democrats more than they help us in most elections.

I think the only argument for Bush here is “lol nice guy Smiley “ Trump’s rhetoric was certainly more toxic, and he was obviously still horrible, but on almost any metric he was certainly better than Dubya. For example, if I were to tell you there were two candidates on the ballot:

Candidate 1 is:

Pro-life
Extremely Anti-Gay
Extremely Anti-Marijuana legalization
Arguably a top 5 military hawk among all U.S. Presidents
Against the vast majority of government spending that wasn’t directly tied to murdering Middle-Easterners
A Bible-Thumper who uses the Good Book to justify murdering the brown people in Iraq, along with his attempts at constitutionally banning gay-rights.

Candidate 2 is:

Pro-life (but everyone knows he doesn’t actually give two sh*ts about this issue)
Has made almost no attempt to overturn national gay marriage, besides occasional whispers that never went anywhere.
Fired his Attorney General who wanted to prosecute states that had legalized marijuana. And sure, while there were other reasons that he fired Sessions, from everything we can tell he wanted him to leave states that had legalized alone. 
Got us less involved overall in the Middle East
Is fine spending federal dollars to stimulate the economy.
Is so obviously not a Bible Thumper that he can’t even hold the book right side up.

The only area where Bush was demonstrably better than Trump was the immigration issue, and while I agree, his stances on immigration were abysmal, I don’t think that his stance on this was any worse than the Tea Party Era Republican Party of 2009-12. Trump saw where the party was headed, and jumped on it. This obviously doesn’t excuse his behavior, or horrific views on most issues, but let’s be realistic, Bush would’ve never gotten the opportunity to be president if he had run in 2016 with his “compassionate” views on immigration. He would’ve lost the primary to Trump or whoever the “populist,” anti-immigrant candidate was.

If I’m a Democrat however, I would much rather run against a Bush type in 2024, than a Trump type. I’d welcome the neo-cons reclaiming the GOP as it would likely lead to 3 or 4 straight Democratic victories. The key to victory right now is blue-collar Americans. If the GOP goes back to the neo-cons, it can almost be guaranteed that many of the gains they made among working class whites will be erased in the years to come.

Bush created a fertile ground for Trump to rise in. Trump's rhetoric created division, polarization and violence, but on policies he was much better. Both were atrocious though and easily among the worst presidents we've ever had.

Let's not forget the roles Nixon, Reagan, and Gingrich had in Trump's rise.
certainly!

Yes, I’d argue that Trump was like if Teddy Roosevelt and Nixon had a really f***ed up baby, with a dash of Reagan clichés thrown in. But we also can’t completely let Democrats off the hook 100% in the rise of Trump. If the Democrats had actually been able to accomplish some of the same economic policy goals that they’ve been talking about since the 60’s, the environment most likely wouldn’t have been fertile for someone like Trump to rise. For example if we’d gotten universal health care, and a better welfare state, the GOP would be so obsessed with slashing those programs that we’d never have lost in places like Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin etc. 

My friend likes to say that, “Donald Trump is what you'd get if Ross Perot and George Wallace had a hate-child in a dumpster next to 4chan’s main server cluster.“
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« Reply #74 on: January 14, 2021, 08:28:38 PM »

Pro-life
Extremely Anti-Gay
Extremely Anti-Marijuana legalization
Arguably a top 5 military hawk among all U.S. Presidents
Against the vast majority of government spending that wasn’t directly tied to murdering Middle-Easterners
A Bible-Thumper who uses the Good Book to justify murdering the brown people in Iraq, along with his attempts at constitutionally banning gay-rights. 

Virtually no mainstream politicians supported SSM and marijuana legalization during Bush's time in office, so it doesn't make any sense to use that as a measuring stick to compare Bush and Trump. If you watch the 2008 VP debate, the moderator notes that opposition to SSM seems to be the only thing Palin and Biden can agree on. If a member of the extended Bush family married someone of the same sex, I cannot see Bush, in 2021, not congratulating them and accepting them as a member of the family. Bush spent big domestically, too, including Medicare Part D, which costs more than the entire State Department.

His administration manufacturing the Iraq War was an obvious disgrace, but it was the result of a deeply misguided ideology having way too much influence in the White House. Bush didn't view the Presidency primarily as something to be exploited for his own personal gain. The Trump administration, on the other hand, has never had any objectives other than the enrichment and aggrandizement of Trump.
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